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What Does Tradition Have to Teach Me About Human Life in My Particular Time and with My Problems?
In life, we have to find things we enjoy to stay happy and make things beautiful. The overall picture from the life-history interview would seem to support the generalization that aggressiveness in persons of excellent ego-strength stems from life circumstances marked by relatively greater discord in the home during childhood and by friction in significant personal relations. The first and most obvious consideration in the relationship of rebelliousness to mortality and psychological health is one which by now has passed from iconoclastic protest to virtual stereotypes. Nonetheless, it should not be disregarded. It is simply this: rebellion-resistance to acculturation, refusal to adjust, adamant insistence on the important of the self and of individuality—is very often the mark of a healthy character. If the rules deprive you of some part of yourself, then it is better to be unruly. The socially disapproved expression of this is delinquency, and most delinquency certainly is just plain confusion or blind harmful striking out at the wrong enemy; nut some delinquency has affirmation behind it, and we should not be too hasty in giving a bad name to what gives us a bad time. The givers to humanity often have profound refusal in their souls, and they are aroused to wrath at the shoddy, the meretricious, and the unjust which society seems to produce in appalling volume. Society is tough in its ways, and it is no wonder that those who fight it tooth and nail are tough people. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
If it recognized the potential value of the wayward characters who make its business for it, I think that much of the research and of the social action in relation to delinquency would be wiser. A person who is neither shy nor rebellious in one’s youth is not likely to be worth a farthing to oneself nor to anyone else in the years of one’s physical maturity. A second consideration which is certainly no news to most people, but which tends to get lost to psychologists who use phrases like guilt feelings, hostility, and anxiety, is that the healthy person psychologically is usually virtuous in the simple moral sense of the term. Psychologically healthy people do what they think is right, and what they think is right is that people should not lie to one another or to themselves, that they should not steal, slander, persecute, intrude, do damage willfully, go back on their word, fail a friend, or do any of the things that put them on the side of death against life. This probably sounds like old-time religion, and in fact I am willing to be straightforwardly theological about this. “It may suffice if I only say they are preserved for a wise purpose, which purpose is known unto God; for he doth counsel in wisdom over all his work, and his paths are straight, and his course is one eternal round,” reports Alma 37.12. #RandolpHarris 2 of 17
I think there is an objective character to guilt, and wen a person is false to one’s nature or offends against the nature of others then one is in sin and the place in which one has one’s existence is well descried by the word “hell.” I take “sin” ere to be descriptive of the state of separation from the most basic sense of selfhood, or what some existentialist philosophers have called “the grounds of being.” In whatever terms it is put, the fact is that a person is most alive and is functioning in such a way that one knows who one is and you know who one is and one knows who you are when one’s thoughts and actions are in accord with one’s moral judgment. The corollary is that when one does what one thinks is wrong one gets a feeling of being dead, and if you are steeped in such wrongful ways you feel very dead al the time, and other people know that you are dead. There is such a thing as the death of the spirit. Many of the people whom we know as patients in our mental hospitals or as prisoners in our jails are n a condition of spiritual death, and their only hope is that someone can reach out to them, break through the walls of their isolation, recognize them. I think that too much has been made of the word love in this connection, for usually it connotes a feeling on the part of the person who is to give love. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
The essence of the act of love as I understand it is the action of attention, and the affect that accompanies it in the person who is paying attention may be love, hate, sadness or what you have. Love pushes us toward this new dimension of consciousness because it is based on the original we experience. Contrary to the usual assumption, we all begin life not as individuals, but as we; we are created by the union of male and female, literally of one flesh. However, the individual person is a human because one can accept the crumbling of the first freedom, painful as it is, can affirm it, and can begin one’s pilgrimage toward full consciousness. A real fight is an act of attention, a genuine condemnation is an action of attention, an understanding of final defeat is an act of attention. These as well as their absolute counterparts are on the side of life, and the person who experiences them is in communication with other living beings and offers to them the possibility of community. The sort of philosophy of psychotherapy that prescribes blandness, nonjudgmentalness, and essential indifference on the part of the psychotherapist is simply a form of human debasement. Paying attention, caring, and being there yourself is all that counts. When discussing psychotherapy as relationship, recall that one of the therapists there was clearly an incompetent by all standards—AMA, APA, and probably the Bureau of Internal Revenue as well. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
Everything this one therapist did was wrong. After about six months of his residency, however, it became apparent that many of his patients were unaccountably getting better. Among his aberrant behavior were such gross actions as telephoning a patient’s foreman at work and telling him to stop bullying the patient, suggesting an unusual technique in pleasures of the flesh to another patient whose wife was apparently frigid, and bluntly suggesting to a third patient that he should give up his job as an automobile repairman and get into the dispensing of food. The climax of the latter case was especially gruesome to the clinic, for the patient opened a doughnut shop of his own and on his final appointment appeared with a dozen doughnuts of his own making which he presented as a gift to the therapist, who without any insight at all offered them around to various other therapists and his supervisor, all to whom had difficulty swallowing them. Goodness knows, I am not suggesting, in recalling the case of this incompetent fellow, that all psychotherapists go forth and do likewise, for he was he and we are we. However, I will say that he was alive, even though so obviously misguided; to his patients, the only thing that was of consequence was that he cared about them and that he though there was something different they could do which would be right. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
Religious ideology is needed in order to keep people from losing discipline and this threatening social coherence. Fear of freedom also expresses itself in various legalistic approaches to life. We see or perceive what we want or need to perceive, and our nervous system can come to act as if the other sensation did not exist. This phenomenon is called perceptual vigilance (or perceptual set). We are on guard, or ready, to concentrate on certain kinds of stimuli and filter out those that we do not want or need to receive. This selective perception can work for one in many cases (like looking for a particular shirt in your closet and not paying attention to the others), it can work against one when our own security needs are so strong tat they distort or limit our perceptions of the World and people around us. However, generalization is not always a bad thing to do. The ability to generalize is useful in forming concepts—a vital part of thinking and reasoning. Even though it is unscientific or silly, we generalize about people all the time. This is the cause for a lot of serious conflicts between people. When we generalize about people and then use that generalization as the image or symbol for a whole group, we are stereotyping. Stereotyping is a handy way of lumping things together for easy reference; we all do it at one time or another. Sometimes stereotypes are creations of an entire society or nation. We have a great propensity for regulating life in minute detail and insofar as possible deciding in advance what is right and what is wrong or what is socially acceptable or unacceptable. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
And if we are successful in doing this, usually with the assistance of religious groups or social class, then we can know in almost every situation what we should do. Then we no longer have to think or feel. We can rather automatically do what we know is right; or, failing that, we suffer the appropriate guilt for the sin or social blunder that we have committed. This makes for a safe, regulated kind of life. However, it also tends to be a joyless life from which most of the spontaneity and creativity has been removed. Although it is often maintained that a sense of responsibility demands a clear-cut view of right and wrong, it is more likely that such legalistic approaches actually undermine personal responsibility. For there are regions of human behavior and action that may not be so clear as to what is the right decision in ethical situations. And when we ignore these unobscured areas, arbitrarily seeing all factors as absolutes, we take ourselves off the hook of wrestling with the subtleties of the situation. We are in a position where we can uphold the right and denounce the evil. Some people live up to stereotypes because it is easier or more profitable to go along with what is expected. People who are firm believers in Christ as the great lover, the self-sacrificing God, can turn this belief, in an alienated way, into the experience that it is Jesus who loves them for them. A new set of higher expectations are being created for people. These, too, are beginning to fulfill themselves. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
In society, the great medieval thinkers held that all people are equal in the sight of God and that even the humblest has an infinite worth. In economics, they taught that work is a source of dignity not of degradation, that no mortal should be used for an end independent of one’s welfare, and that justice should determine wages and prices. In politics, they taught that the function of the state is moral, that law and its administration should be imbued with Christian ideas of justice, and the relations of ruler and ruled should always be founded on reciprocal obligation. The state, property, and the family are all trusts from God to those who control them, and they must be used to further divine purposes. Finally, the mediaeval ideal included the strong belief that all nations and peoples are part of one great community. Above nations is humanity. However, the concepts may differ, one belief defines any branch of Christianity: the belief in Jesus Christ as the Savior who gave his life out of love for his fellow creatures. He was the hero of love, a hero without power, who did not use force, who did not want to rule, who did not want to have anything. He was a hero of being, of giving, of sharing. These qualities deeply appealed to the Roman poor as well as to some of the rich, who choked on their selfishness. Jesus appealed to the hearts of the people, even though from an intellectual standpoint he was at best considered to be naïve. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
This belief in the hero of love won hundreds of thousands of adherents, many of whom changed their practice of life, or become martyrs themselves. The greatest achievement was to dedicate one’s life to God. Because Jesus loves us for who we are, the belief in him becomes the substitute for one’s own act of loving. In a simple, unconscious formula: Christ does all the loving for us; we can go on in the pattern of the Greek hero, yet we are saved because the alienated faith in Christ is a substitute for the imitation of Christ. Human beings are so deeply endowed with a need to love that acting as wolves causes us necessarily to have a guilty conscience. Our professed belief in love anesthetize us to some degree against the pain of the unconscious feeling of guilt for being entirely without love. However, the soul cannot live without love and friendship. Being able to relax in the presence of the beloved and accept the other’s being as being, is simply liking to be with the other, living to rest with the other, liking the rhythm of the walk, the voice, the whole being of the other. This gives a width to the soul; it gives it time to grow; time to sink its roots down deeper. We understand that we are not required to do anything for the beloved except accept him, her, or them, and enjoy being in their company. It is friendship in the simplest, most direct terms. This is why religion makes so much of acceptance. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
We are the independent people who, often taking our powers too seriously, continuously act and react, unaware that much of the value in life comes only if we do not press, comes in quietly when it is not pushed or required, comes not from a drive from behind or an attraction in front, but emerges silently from being together. Sometimes it seems love is honored as a kind of vestige of bygone periods when people had time for friendships. We now find ourselves so rushed, going from work to meetings to a late dinner to bed and up again the next morning, that the contribution to love to our lives is lost. Or we get it mistakenly connected with homosexuality; American men are especially afraid of male friendship lest it have in it some trace of the homosexual. However, at least, we must recall that the importance of love is very great in helping us to find ourselves and begin the developing of identity. Love, in turn, needs altruism. We have to have an esteem for the other, the concern for the other’s welfare beyond any gain that one can get out of it; disinterested love, typically, the love of God for mortals. Charity, as the word is translated in the New Testament, is a poor translation, but it does contain within it the element of selfless giving. It is an analogy—though not an identity—with the biological aspect of nature which makes a person defend their youth, and the human being love his or her own baby with a built-in mechanism without regard for what that baby can do for him or her. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
We are aware that no human being’s motivations are purely disinterested, that everyone’s motivations are, at best, a blending of these different kinds of love. Just as I would not like someone to love me purely ethereally, without regard for my body and without any awareness of whether I am male or female, I also do not want to be loved only for my body. A child senses the lie when he is told that adults do something only for your good, and everyone dislikes being told he or she is loved only spiritually. Each kind of love, however, presupposes care, for it assets that something does matter. In normal human relations, each kind of love has an element of other types of love, no matter how obscured it may be. Yet, we have lost much of our creative relationship to the wisdom of the past. History is our social, communal body: in it we live, move and have our being; and to cut one’s self off from it, to hold it is inconsequential, is about as sensible as to say, “My physical body is bunk.” It shuts that person off from a creative relationship to an important segment of the wisdom of thy fathers. This situation is unfortunate not only for the society but also for the person one’s self for it robs that individual of an important part of one’s historical body, and thus contributes much to the diffuse perplexity and feelings of rootlessness of individuals of our day. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
Another very common way of keeping tight reins on freedom is by overplanning and overorganizing life. Many a housewife or househusband, for example, finds it difficult—if not almost impossible—to drop everything on a moment’s notice and go on a picnic with the family. Perhaps there are dirty dishes in the sink, a roast simmering in the oven, or a pie cooling on the windowsill or a disarray in the house and she or he is certain that one could not relax and enjoy one’s self if one left these jobs undone. And there is every likelihood that one might not, for many find it difficult to enjoy the spontaneity that can enrich life. The freedom appears to be too frightening. It will come as no surprise to some to hear that family vacation are sometimes unhappy occasions despite the high hopes entertained when the family stated out, car loaded down, for distant destination. One couple who had experiences such disappointments made another attempt after some months in psychotherapy. The therapist was delighted when he received a picture postcard from Canada with a very brief message: “Having wonderful time! Why?” Well, why not? Likely there are a couple of reasons why we often manage to be miserable on vacations. For one thing the family is together—let that read TOGETHER—more than at any other time, and that physical closeness that creates the possibility of emotional closeness is probably frightening to us, with the effort to eliminate this frightening possibility, manages in one way or another to get on the nerves of everyone else. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
The other reason is that we are confronted with all that freedom. We have two weeks in which we can do as we please and go where we please. No alarm clocks jangling, no school bells telling us to move from one class to another, no time clocks to punch, no precise hour when dinner must be on the table, no projects to be completed by such-and-such time. We are free, and it scares us! So how do we meet this crisis in freedom? Many of us meet it with a frenzy of planning. We go to the drawer, pull out maps, and make an itinerary. “Now let’s see, we’ll sleep here the first night, then go over there, eat lunch in this town, spend an hour on this beach, and drive on to that place before dark, and….and, oh yes, we’d better call the BMW automobile club and have them make all the reservations along the way for us so there won’t be any hitches in THE PLAN.” Planning, organization, and reducing some routine tasks in life to habit can perform the useful function of permitting the individual to live a freer and more creative life. If, for example, a housewife or househusband can sit down and plan a week’s menus for the family so that one can do one’s shopping in a single trip, a lot of time will be saved and needless last-minute worry eliminated about “What in the World are we going to eat tonight?” She or he has gained some free time by her or his planning. If one becomes a slave to one’s menus, however, it is quite another story. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
If one is no longer free to change one’s mind for a personal or family whim, one has sacrificed one of the pleasures of spontaneous living. One’s rigidity becomes one’s defense against freedom, which frightens the individual. Every home and almost every work situation provides countless opportunities to overplan and overorganize our lives. Many a businessman or businesswoman has spent one’s life tending to details without ever asking one’s self how relevant and how necessary the details are. The freedom to see creative ways of changing one’s routines and expanding one’s productivity with all of the necessary risks involved may have been too frightening. It is important, therefore, whether we are intellectuals or sophisticates or merely alert human beings seeking bearings in a confused and perplexed time, to ask “How can one relate to the inherited traditional so that one’s own freedom and personal responsibility are not sacrificed in the process? One principle, to start with, is clear: the greater a person’s awareness of one’s self, the more one can acquire the wisdom of our fathers to make it ours. It is the persons who are weak in the sense of their own personal identity who are overcome by the power of tradition, who cannot stand in its presence, and who therefore either capitulate to it, cut themselves off from it, or rebel against it. One of the distinguishing marks of strength as a self is the capacity to immerse one’s self in tradition and at the same time be one’s own unique self. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
This is what the classics, in literature or ethics or any other field, should do for one. For the essence of a classic is that it arises from such profound depths in human experience that, like the works of Isaiah, The House of Mirth, A Brave New World, it speaks to us who live centuries later in vastly different cultures as the voice of our own experience, helping us to understand ourselves better and enriching us by releasing echoes within ourselves which we may not have known were there. “Deep calleth unto deep,” as the psalmist puts it. One need not go along literally with Jung’s concept of archetypes or the collective unconscious to agree that the deeper one goes into one’s own experience (let us say in confronting death, or experiencing love, or in the elemental relations in the family), the more one’s experience has in common with similar experiences of other mortals in other ages and cultures. This is why the dramas of Sophocles, the dialogues of Plato, and the paintings of reindeer and bison on the cave walls in Southern France by anonymous Cro-Magnon mortals some twenty thousand years ago many speak more powerfully and elicit greater response in us than the bulk of the writings or pictures of five years ago. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
However, the more profoundly one delves into one’s own experience, the more original are one’s reactions and productions. Here is the seeming paradox, which no doubt everyone knows to be true in one’s own experience, that the more profoundly one can confront and experience the accumulated wealth in one’s tradition, the more uniquely one can at the same time know and be one’s self. The battle, therefore, is not between individual freedom and tradition as such. The issue, again, is how the tradition is used. We must ask, “What does the tradition have to teach me about human life, in my particular time and with my problems?” Then we are using the wealth of wisdom accumulated through historical tradition for our own enrichment and guidance as a freedom. For instance, when the United States of America entered World War I on 6 April 1917, baseball became the national pastime because people used it as a means to distract themselves from the war. Baseball even boosted morale of American forces overseas. The American military created 77 baseball diamonds in France, and on any given day some 200 games were played throughout the country. Many baseball fans are familiar with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “Green Light” letter, in which he encouraged baseball owners and executives to keep baseball going in the states to keep Americans happy. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
Other efforts were made to distract Americans from the war and make them feel safe like some of the architecture in Oakland, California USA. On Picardy Drive in East Oakland, in the 1920s Storybook houses were built to make people feel like they were entering a fairytale. Picardy Drive was developed by builder Robert Cleveland Hillen and architect Walter W. Dixon, whose houses have been called modest mansions for the whimsical glory and romantic style, which made them feel like castles. To be a vital part of the marvelous work and a wonder of these days, you must submit your will to God, letting it be swallowed up in his will. As you press forward with steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and love of God and of all people feasting upon the Word of Christ. We must keep searching diligently for blessings and salvation, praying always, and believing, then as the Lord promises that all thing shall work together for your good. Let this desire inspire you to greet each new morning with enthusiasm and let it fuel your thoughts and actions throughout each day. If you do this, you will be blessed amid a World that need love and guidance, and you and your loved ones will be secure and happy. This will allow us the spiritual power to handle life with faith and trust in God. And is you are looking for more new story book houses, check out one of my favorite builders Cresleigh Homes Rocklin Trails. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
Who Has Not Found Heaven for Where Your Treasure is Will be Your Heart?
And then the room was empty. Perfectly empty. I turned, disconsolate and shuddering, and put my head down on my arm, as if I could go to sleep on my desk. I was considering William James, that psychologist-philosopher American-man-of-genius, who struggled all his life with the problem of his will. One of my esteemed colleagues, writing of James’s severe depression and the fact that for a number of years he was on the verge of suicide, asks us not to judge him harshly for those aspects of maladjustment. I take a different view. I believe that understanding the depressions James suffered and the way he dealt with them increases our appreciation and admiration for him. True, all his life he was plagued by vacillation and an inability to make up his mind. In his last years, when he was struggling to give up his lecturing at Harvard, he would write in his diary one day, “Resign,” the next day, “Don’t resign,” and the third day, “Resign” again. James’s difficulty in making up his mind was connected with his inner richness and the myriad of possibilities for him in every decision. However, it was precisely James’s depressions—in which he would often write of his yearning for “a reason for wishing to live four hours longer”—which forced him to be so concerned with will, and precisely in the struggle against these depressions that he learned so much about human will. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
William James believed—and, as a therapist, I believe that his judgment here is clinically sound—that it was own discovery of the capacity to will which enabled him to live a tremendously fruitful life up to his death at sixty-eight, despite his depressions and hos continual affliction with insomnia, eye troubles, back disorders, and so on. In our own “age of this disordered will,” as it has been termed, we turn to William James with eagerness to find whatever help he can give us with our own problem of will. He begins his famous chapter on will, published in 1890, by summarily dismissing wish as what we do when we desire something which is not possible for achievement, and contrast it with will, which exists when the end is within our power. If with the desire there is a sense that attainment is not possible, we simply wish. I believe that this definition is one of the places where James’s Victorianism shows through; wishes are treated as unreal and immature. Obviously, no wish is possible when we first wish it. It becomes possible only as we wish it in many different ways, and through considering it from this side and that, possibly over a great period of time, we generate the power and take the risk to make it happen. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
However, then James launches into what turns out to be one of the most thrilling treatises on will in literature, which I can only touch on. There is, first, the primary type, which is distinguished by the fact it does not require a whole series of decisions. We desire to change our shirt or begin to write on paper, and once we start, a whole series of movements is set going by itself; it is ideomotor. This primary will requires absence of conflict. James is here trying to preserve spontaneity. He is taking his stand against Victorian Will power, the exercise of the separate faculty called will power which must have failed him dismally in his own life and led him into the paralysis which expressed itself in his depressions. Now we know in our day a lot more about this so-called absence of conflict, thanks chiefly to psychoanalysis, and that infinitely more is going on in states which seem without conflict. He then touches on the healthy will which he defines as action following vision. The vision requires a clear concept and consists of motives in their right ratio to each other—which is a fairly rationalistic picture. Discussing unhealth will, he rightly focuses on the obstructed will. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
Obstructed will, one illustration of this that James cites is the state that exists when our eyes lose focus and we are unable to rally our attention. We sit blankly staring and do nothing. The objects of consciousness fail to touch the quick or break the skin. Great fatigue or exhaustion marks this condition; and an apathy resembling that then brought about is recognized in asylums under the name of abulia as a symptom of mental disease. It is interesting that he relates this apathy only to mental disease. I, for one, believe this is the chronic, endemic, psychic state of our society in our day—the neurotic personality of our time. The question then boils down to: Why does not something interest me, reach out to me, grasp me? And James then comes to the central problem of will, namely attention. I do not know whether he realized what a stroke of genius this was. When we analyze will with all the tools modern psychoanalysis brings us, we shall find ourselves pushed back to the level of attention or intention as the seat of will. The effort which goes into the exercise of the will is really effort to attention; the strain in the willing is the effort to keep the consciousness clear, for instance, the strain of keeping the attention focused. The once-born type of well-adjusted person does not a lot. This leads one to a surprising, though very keen, statement of an identity between belief, attention, and will. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
Will and belief, in short, meaning a certain relation between objects and the Self, are two names for one and the same psychological phenomenon. The most compendious possible formula perhaps would be that our belief and attention are the same fact. James then beguiles us with one of his completely human and Earthly illustrations. I cite it in detail because I wish to come back to it in discussing the unfinished aspects of James’ concept of will: We know what it is to get out of bed on a freezing morning in a room without a fire, and how they very vital principle within us protests against the ordeal. [The scene is New England before the advent of central heating.] Probably most persons have lain on certain mornings for an hour at a time unable to brace themselves to the resolve. We think how late we shall be, how the duties of the day will suffer; we say, “I must get up, this ignominious,” and so on. However, still the warm couch feels too delicious, and the cold outside too cruel, and resolution faints away and postpones itself again and again just as it seemed on the verge of the decisive act. Now how do we get up under such circumstances? If I may generalize from my own experience, we more often than not get up without any struggle or decision at all. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
We suddenly find that we have got up. A fortunate lapse of consciousness occurs; we forget both the warmth and the cold; we fall into some revery connected with the day’s life, in the course of which the idea flashes across us, “Hollo! I must lie here no longer” and idea which at that lucky instant awakens no contradictory or paralyzing suggestions, and consequently produces immediately its appropriate motor effects. It was our acute consciousness of both the warmth and the col during the period of struggle which paralyzed our activity. James concludes that the moment the inhibition ceases, the original idea exerts its effect, and up we get. He adds, with typical Jamesian confidence, that “This case seems to me to contain in miniature form the data for an entire psychology of volition.” Let us now take, for our special examination, James’s own example. We note that then he gets to the heart of the problem of will in this illustration there comes a remarkable statement. He writes, “We suddenly find that we have got up.” That is to say, he jumps over the whole problem. No decision at all occurs, but only a fortunate lapse of consciousness. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
However, I ask, what went on in that fortunate lapse of consciousness? True, the paralyzing bind of his ambivalence was released. However, that is a negative statement and does not tell us why anything else happened. Surely we cannot call this just a lucky instant, as James does, or a happenstance! If our basis for will rests on the mere luck or happenstance, our house is built upon the sands indeed, and we have no basis for with at all. Now I do not mean to imply that so far James, in this example, has not said something. He has, and it is very important: the whole incident shows the bankruptcy of Victorian will power, will consisting of a faculty which is based upon our capacity to force our bodies to act against their desires. Victorian will power turned everything into a rationalistic, moralistic issue, for instance, the attraction of the warmth of the bed, the giving in to of which is ignominious, as opposed to the so-called supergo pressure to be upright, that is, up and working. Dr. Freud described at length the self-deceit and rationalization involved in Victorian will power and I believe, dethroned it once and for all. The example shows James’s own struggle against the paralyzing effects of Victorianism, in which the goal becomes twisted into a self-centered demonstration of one’s own character and the real moral issue get entirely lost in the shuffle. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
So we return to our crucial question. What went on in that fortunate lapse of consciousness? James only tells us that we fall into some revery connected with the day’s life. Ah, here lies our secret! Psychotherapy has brought us a good deal of data about that revery which James did not have—and I do not believe that we fall into it at all. For purposes of clarity, I shall state here my own argument concerning unfinished business in James’s concept of will. I as it is also omitted by us in contemporary psychology. The answer does not lie in James’s conscious analysis or in Dr. Freud’s analysis of the unconscious, but in a dimension which cuts across and includes both conscious and unconscious, and both cognition and conation. Along with rediscovering our feelings and wants, we also should recover our relation with the subconscious aspects of ourselves. As modern mortals have given up sovereignty over their bodies, so also have they surrendered the unconscious side of their personality, and it has become almost alien to them. When we cut off an exceedingly great and significant portion of the self, we are then no longer able to use much of the wisdom and power of the unconscious. It puts us in the position of trying to drive a BMW 5 series with the reins attached to only one wheel. Though the tendencies and intuitions in the unconscious are blocked off from our conscious awareness, they are still part of the self and accessible in various degrees to being made conscious. The sooner we recover sovereignty in that portion of the kingdom the better. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
Understanding dreams is of course a subtle and complex matter—though it is not so complex as one would think when one reads about the esoteric symbols in much modern dream interpretation. These esoteric symbols put the whole problem back into a foreign language again—and that is another way, perhaps the typically modern way, of surrendering our sovereignty over the unconscious aspects of ourselves. As though we were saying the authorities and those who know the magic answers can understand our dreams, but we cannot ourselves! Dr. Erich Froom’s book, The Forgotten Language, points out that dreams, like myths and fairy tales, are not all a foreign language, but are in reality part of the one universal language shared my all humankind. Dr. Fromm’s book is to be recommended to the nontechnical reader who wishes to relearn something about this subconscious language of his fatherland. Dreams are expressions not only of conflicts and repressed desires, but also of previous knowledge that one has learned, possibly many years before, and thinks one has forgotten. Even the unskilled person, if one takes the attitude that what one’s dreams tell one is not simply to be rejected as silly, may get occasional useful guidance from one’s dreams. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
And the person who has become skillful in the understand of what one is saying to oneself in one’s dreams can get from them, from time to time, marvelously valuable hints and insights into solutions to problems. The more self-awareness a person has, the more alive one is. The more consciousness, the more self. Becoming a person means this heightened awareness, this heightened experiences of “I-ness,” this experience that it is I, the acting one, who is the subject of what is occurring. This view of what it means to become a person, in conclusion, saves us from two errors. The first is passivism—letting the deterministic forces in one’s experience take the place of self-awareness. It must be admitted that some tendencies in the older forms of psychoanalysis can be used to rationalize passivism. It was the epoch-making discovery of Dr. Freud to show how much every person is pushed by unconscious fears, desires and tendencies of all sorts, and that mortal is really much less a master in the household of one’s own mind than in the Victorian mortal of will power fondly believed. However, a harmful implication was carried along with this emphasis on the determinism of unconscious forces, which Dr. Freud himself partly succumbed to. The early psychotherapist Dr. Grodeck, for example, wrote, “We are lived by our unconscious,” and Dr, Freud in a letter commended him for his emphasis on the passivity of the ego. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
However, we must underline to correct a partial misunderstanding, that the over-all purpose of Dr. Freud’s exploration of the unconscious forces was to help people bring these forces into consciousness. The goal of psychoanalysis, as he said time and again, was to make the unconscious conscious: to enlarge the scope of awareness; to help the individual become aware of the unconscious tendencies which have tended to push the self around like mutinous sailors who have seized power below the deck of the ship; and this to help the person consciously direct one’s own ship. Hence the emphasis on the heightened awareness of one’s self, and the warning against passivism, have much in common with the over-all purpose of Dr. Freud’s thought. The other error of this view of the person enables us to avoid is activism—that is, using activity as a substitute for awareness. By activism we mean the tendency, so common in this country, to assume that the more one is acting, the more one is alive. It should be clear that when we have used the term “the active I,” we have not meant busyness or merely doing things. Many people keep busy all the time as a way of covering up their anxiety; their activism is a way of running from themselves. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
People who are busy so they have something to focus on and as a result are distracted from their problems get a pseudo and temporary sense of aliveness by being in a hurry, as though something is going on if they are but moving, and as though being busy is a proof of one’s importance. Chaucer has a sly and astute comment about this type, represented in the merchant in Canterbury Tales, “Methinks he seemed busier than he was.” It is true, however, when life is not going the way you like it and you have a lot of problems that you cannot resolve on your own, being busy gives you a sense of purpose, it makes life worth living and it makes the days rip by life a vampire speed reading a novel. You wake up, stay busy, and before you know it is bed time, you are one day closer to being free. Keeping busy is the only reason some people are still alive. Our emphasis on self-awareness certainly includes actin as an expression of the alive, integrated self, but it is the opposite to activism—the opposite, that is, to acting as an escape from self-awareness. Aliveness often means the capacity not to act, to be creatively idle—which may be more difficult for most modern people than to do something. To be idle requires a strong sense of personal identity. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
Self-awareness, as we have proposed it, brings back into the picture the quieter kinds of aliveness—the arts of contemplation and meditation for example, which the Western World, to its peril, has all but lost. It brings a new appreciation for being something rather than merely doing something. With such a relation to oneself, work for us modern mortals—who are the great toilers and producers—will not be an escape from ourselves or a way of trying to prove our worth, but a creative expression of the spontaneous powers of person who has consciously affirmed one’s relatedness to one’s World and one’s fellow mortals. The nature of faith justifies the history of religion and makes it understandable as a history of mortal’s ultimate concern, of one’s response to the manifestation of the holy in many places in many ways. A divine figure ceases to create reply, it ceases to be a common symbol and loses its power to move for action. Symbols which for a certain period, or in a certain place, expressed truth of faith for a certain group now only remind of the faith of the past. They have lost their truth, and it is an open question whether dead symbols can be revived. Probably not for those to whom they have died! A symbol of faith is infinite because it is not idolatrous. However, the human mind is a continuously working factory of idols. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
Everything said about faith is derived from the experience of actual faith, of faith as a living reality, or in a metaphoric abbreviation, of the life of faith. Without the manifestation of God in mortals the question of God and faith in God are not possible. There is no faith without participation. Since the life of faith is life in the state of ultimate concern and no human being can exist completely without such a concern, we say: Neither faith nor doubt can be eliminate from mortals as mortals. Faith and doubt have been contrasted in such a way that the quiet certainty of faith has been praised as the complete removal of doubt. There is, indeed, a serenity of the life in faith beyond the disturbing struggles between faith and doubt. To attain such a state is a natural and justified desire of every human being. Doubt is not overcome by repression, but by courage. Courage does not deny that there is doubt, but it takes the doubt into itself as an expression of its own finitude and affirms the content of an ultimate concern. Courage does not need the safety of an unquestionable conviction. It includes the risk without which no creative life is possible. All this is declared about living faith, of faith as actual concern, and not of faith as a traditional attitude without tensions, without doubt and without courage. Faith in this sense, which is the attitude of many members of the churches as well as of society at large. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
In mystical literature the vision of God is described as the stage which transcends the state of faith either after the Earthly life or in rare moments within it. In the complete reunion with the divine ground of being, the element of distance is overcome and with it uncertainty, doubt, courage and risk. The finite is taken into the infinite; it is not extinguished, but it is not separated either. This is not the ordinary human situation. To the state of separated finitude belong faith and the courage to risk. The risk of faith is the concrete content of one’s ultimate concern. Jesus and Satan appear as representative of two opposite principles. Satan is the representative of material consumption and of power over nature and mortals. Jesus is the representative being, and his manifestation is a symbol of the Savior of humanity. The World has followed Satan’s principles, since the time of the gospels. Yet even the victory of these principles could not destroy the longing for the realization of full being, expressed by Jesus as well as by many other great Masters who lived before him and after him. When you use things with a hardened heart, you use what is alien to you, and that indulgent, selfish use is avarice, which is the root of all evil. Some people hold to their selfish nature, and they may have the name of being saintly on the basis of the external appearances, but inside they are asses, because they do not grasp the meaning of divine truth. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
However, this does not mean that we should not have anything, it just means that we should not be bound by anything. God wants to act in the soul, and he himself must be in the place in which he acts—and that he would like to do. Everything and anything can become an object of craving: things we use in daily life, property, rituals, good deeds, knowledge, and thoughts. While they are not in themselves bad, they become bad; that is, when we hold onto them, when they become chains that interfere with our freedom, they block our self-realization. People need to uncover their most hidden secrete ties of selfishness, of intentions, and opinions. However, the fact of the matter is most people will not analyze their behavior nor recognize their own errors until they are faced with extreme hardship. It is not a character building exercise, but it reveals your truth self. Some people walk away from their trials and tribulations a much better person, others walk away from their trials and tribulations with a spirit of lack and limitation and will do whatever they can to prosper, even if it means hurting their own family to get ahead in the World. Therefore, people should not consider so much what they are to do as what they are. Thus take care that your emphasis is laid on being good and not on the number or kind of things to be done. Emphasize rather the fundamentals on which your work rests. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
Our being is the reality, the spirit that moves us, the character that impels our behavior; in contrast, the deeds or opinions that are separated from our dynamic core have no reality. We are to be active in the classic sense of the productive expression of one’s human powers, not in the modern sense of being busy. Activity means to go out of oneself. Run into peace. The person who is in the state of running, of continuous running into peace is a Heavenly person. One continually runs and moves and seeks peace in running. The active vessel is alive and it grows and it is filled and never will be full. Out of this criterion comes the message which is the very heart of Christianity and makes possible the courage to affirm faith in the Christ, namely, that in spite of all forces of separation between God and mortals this is overcome from the side of God. One of the forces of separation is a doubt which tries to prevent the courage to affirm one’s faith. Although we are never able to bride the infinite distance between the infinite and the finite from the side of faith, this alone makes the courage of faith possible. The risk of failure, of error and of idolatrous distortion can be taken, because the failure cannot separate us from what is our ultimate concern. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
Sometimes One Can Mistake Gratitude for Love—Dogs are Hardly an Article of Faith
Love or the lack of it is at the root of everything. Guard your children. Weigh wisdom of intervention if such is even possible. Ponder the question of inevitability. To cease wishing is a contemporary emotional and spiritual wasteland, almost like inhabiting the land of the dead. Another characteristic is satiety; if wishes are thought of only as pushed toward gratification, the end consisting of the satisfying of the need, the reality is that emptiness and vacuity and futility are greatest where all wishes are met. For this means one stops wishing. Without faith we cannot want anymore, we cannot wish. The truth of faith consists in true symbols concerning the ultimate. And the faithful is one human being with the power of thought and the need for conceptual understanding. There is a dimension of meaning expressed in the symbolism of the whish, this is what gives the wish its specifically human quality, and without this meaning, the emotional and spiritual aspects of wanting become dried up. When we have faith, it is a symbol that peace and prosperity are just around the corner and it is only a matter of time until all our need will be met. However, the relation to the ultimate is not the same in each case. The philosophical relation is in principle a detached description of the basic structure in which the ultimate manifests itself. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15
The relation of faith is in principle an involved expression of concern about the meaning of the ultimate for the faithful. The difference is obvious and fundamental. However, it is, as the phrase “in principle” indicates, a difference which is not maintained in the actual life of philosophy and of faith. It cannot be maintained, because the philosopher is a human being with an ultimate concern, hidden or open. And the faithful one is a human being with the power of thought and the need for conceptual understanding. This is not only a biological fact. It has consequences for the life of philosophy in the philosopher and or the life of faith in the faithful. An analysis of philosophical systems, essays or fragments of all kinds shows that the direction in which the philosopher asks the question and the preference one gives to special types of answers is determined by cognitive consideration and by a state of ultimate concern. The historically most significant philosophies show not only the greatest power of thought but the most passionate concern about the meaning of the ultimate whose manifestations they describe. The philosophy, in its genuine meaning, is carried on by people in whom passions of an ultimate concern is united with a clear and detached observation of the way ultimate reality manifests itself in the process of the Universe. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15
At most general faith means much the same as trust. Therefore, we are being asked to have faith as knowledge of specific truths revealed by God. Faith is a practical commitment beyond the evidence to one’s belief that God exists. We are to have a firm and certain knowledge of God’s benevolence towards us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit. It is this element of ultimate concern behind the philosophical ideas which supplies the truth of faith in them. Our vision of the Universe and our predicament within it unites faith and conceptual work. We may hold that in our sinful state we will inevitably offer a resistance to faith that may be overcome only by God’s grace. It is, however, a further step for individuals of faith to put their revealed knowledge into practice by trusting their lives to God and seeking to obey his will. Humans contain the potentialities of these creative principles, and can choose to make their lives an ascent towards and then a union with the intuitive intelligence. The One is not a being, but infinite being. #RandolphHarris 3 of 15
Thus Christian and Jewish philosophers who held to a creator God could affirm such a conception that God is infinite, and created the World. God, as the creator of all, is not far from any one of us. Philosophy is not only the mother’s womb out of which science and history have come, it is also an ever-present element in actual scientific and historical work. The frame of reference within which the great physicists have seen and are seeing the Universe of their inquiries is philosophical, even if their actual inquiries verify it. In no case is it a result of their discoveries. It is always a vision of the totality of being which consciously or unconsciously determines the frame of their thought. Because this is so one justified in saying that even in the scientific view of reality an element of faith is effective. Scientific view of reality an element of faith is effective. Scientists rightly try to prevent these elements of faith and philosophical truth from interfering with their actual research. This is possible to a great extent; but even the most protected experiment is not absolutely pure—pure in the sense of the exclusion of interfering factors such as the observer, and as the interest which determines the kind of question asked of nature in an experiment. What we said about the philosopher must also be said about the scientist. Even in one’s scientific work one is a human being, grasped by an ultimate concern, and one asks the question of the Universe as such, the philosophical question. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15
Intellectual inquiry into the faith is to be understood as faith seeking understanding (fides quaerens intellectum). To believe is to thin with assent (credere est assensione cogitare). It is an act of the intellect determined not by the reason, but by the will. Faith involves a commitment to believe in a God, to believe God, and to believe in God. What is eternal is unchanging. In the same way the historian is consciously or unconsciously a philosopher. It is quite obvious that every task of the historian beyond finding of the facts is dependent on evaluation of historical factors, especially the nature of mortals, one’s freedom, one’s determination, one’s development out of nature and so forth. It is less obvious but also true that even in the fact of finding historical facts philosophical presuppositions are involved. This is especially true in deciding, out of the infinite number of happenings in every infinitely small moment of time, which facts shall be called historically relevant facts. The historian is further forced to give one’s evaluation of sources and their reliability, a task which is not independent of one’s interpretation of human nature. Finally, in the moment in which a historical work gives implicit or explicit assertions about the meaning of historical events for human existence, the philosophical presuppositions of history are evident. Where there is philosophy there is an expression of an ultimate concern; there is an element of faith, however hidden it may be by the passions of the historian for pure facts. #RandolphHarris 5 of 15
God does not possess anything superadded to his essence, and his essence includes all his perfections. No one can attain to truth unless one philosophizes in the light of faith. Our faith in eternal salvation shows that we have theological truths that exceed human reason. And if one could attain truths about religious claims without faith, these truths would be incomplete. Higher truths are attained through faith. All these consideration show that, in spite of their essential difference, there is an actual union of philosophical truth and the truth of faith in every philosophy and that this union is significant for the work of the scientist and the historian. This union has been called philosophical faith. The term is misleading, because it seems to confuse the two elements, philosophical truth and the truth of faith. Furthermore, the term seems to indicate that there is one philosophical faith, a philosophia perennis, as it has been termed. However, only philosophical questions are perennial, not the answers. There is a continuous process of interpretation of philosophical elements and elements of faith, not one philosophical faith. Revealed theology is a single speculative science concerned with knowledge of God. Because of its greater certitude and higher dignity of subject matter, it is nobler than any other science. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15
Philosophical theology, though, can make demonstrations using the articles of faith as its principles. Moreover, it can apologetically refute objections raised against the faith even if no articles of faith are presupposed. There is truth of faith in philosophical truth. And there is philosophical truth in the truth of faith. In order to see the latter point we must confront the conceptual expression of philosophical truth with the symbolical expression of truth of faith. Now, one can say that most philosophical concepts have mythological ancestors and that most mythological symbols have conceptual elements which can and must be developed as soon as the philosophical consciousness has appeared. In the idea of God the concepts of being, life, spirit, unity and diversity are implied. In the symbol of the creation concepts of finitude, anxiety, freedom and time are implied. The symbol of the “fall of Adam” implies a concept of mortal’s essential nature, of one’s conflict with oneself, of one’s estrangement from oneself. Only because every religious symbol has conceptual potentialities is theo-logy possible. There is a philosophy implied in every symbol of faith. However, faith does not determine the movement of the philosophical thought, just as philosophy does not determine the character of one’s ultimate concern. Symbols of faith can open the eyes of the philosopher to qualities of the Universe which otherwise would not have been recognized. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15
Faith is the starting point, scripture offers the data, and philosophy is a supplement not a competitor. Faith, philosophy, and scripture help make sense of each other. However, faith does not command a definite philosophy, although churches and theological movements have claimed and used Platonic, Aristotelian, Kantian or Humean philosophies. The philosophical implications of the symbols of faith can be developed in many ways, but the truth of faith and the truth of philosophy have no authority over each other. In the past few years, a number of persons in psychiatry and related fields have been pondering and exploring the problems of wishing and willing. We may assume that this confluence of concern must be in answer to a strong need in out time for a new light on these problems. It is not wishing that cases illness but lack of wishing. The problem is to deepen people’s capacity to wish, and one side of our task in therapy is to create the ability to wish. Wish is an optimistic picturing in imagination. It is a transitive verb—to wish involves an act. Wishing is similar to faith because it allows us to see beyond our experience and knowledge and hope that something good may happen, and so we send out more beneficial vibrations into the Universe. Every genuine wish is a creative act. I find support for this in therapy: it is indeed a beneficial step when the patient can feel and state strongly, for example, “I wish to buy a beautiful Cresleigh home and feel safe and secure in my community.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 15
That wish, in effect, moves the conflict from a submerged, unarticulated plane in which one takes no responsibility but expects God and parent to read his or her wishes by telepathy, to an overt, healthy conflict over what one wants. On the basis of theological myth of creation God exults when mortals come through with a wish of one’s own. The wish in interpersonal relationship requires mutuality. This is a truth shown in its breach in many myths, and brings the person to one’s doom. Peer Gynt in Ibsen’s play runs around the World wishing and acting on his wishes; the only trouble is that is wishes have noting to do with the other person he meets but are entirely egocentric, encased in cask of self, sealed up with a bung of self. In The Sleeping Beauty, by the same token, the young princes who assault the briars in order to rescue and awaken the slumbering girl before the time is ripe, are exemplars of behavior which tries to force the other in love and pleasures of flesh before the other is ready; they exhibit a wishing without mutuality. The young princes are devoted to their own desires and needs without relation to Thou. If wish and will can be seen and experienced in this light of autonomous, imaginative acts of interpersonal mutuality, there is profound truth in St. Augustine’s dictum, “Love and do what you will.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 15
We cannot be naïve about human nature. We know full well that this wishing is stated in ideal terms. We know that the trouble is precisely that mortals do wish and will against their neighbor, that imagination is not only the source of our capacity to form the creative mutual wish but it is also bounded by the individual’s own limits, convictions, and experience; and, thus, there is always in our wishing an element of doing violence to the others as well as to ourselves, no matter how well analyzed we may be or how much the recipient of grace or how many times we have experienced satori. This is called the willful element, willful here being the insistence of one’s own wish against the reality of the situation. Willfulness is the kind of will motivated by defiance, in which the wish is more against something than for its object. The defiant, willful is correlated with fantasy rather than with imagination, and is the spirit which negates reality, whether it be a person or an aspect of impersonal nature, rather than sees it, forms it, respect it, or takes joy in it. There are two realms of will, the first consisting of an experience of the self in its totality, a relatively spontaneous movement in a certain direction. In this kind of willing, the body moves as a whole, and the experience is characterized by a relaxation and by an imaginative, open quality. This is an experience of freedom which is anterior to all talk about political or psychological freedom; it is a freedom, presupposed by the determinist and anterior to all the discussions of determinism. #RandolphHarris 10 of 15
In contrast, the will of the second realm is that in which some obtrusive element enters is that in which some obtrusive element enters, some necessity for a decision of an either/or character, a decision with an element of an against something alone with a for something. If one uses the Freudian terminology, the “will of the Super-Ego” would be included in their realm. We can will to read but not to understand, we can will knowledge but not wisdom, we can will scrupulosity but not mortality. This is illustrated in creative work. In the second realm of will is the conscious, effortful, critical application to creative endeavor, in preparing a speech for meeting or revising one’s manuscript, for example. However, when actually giving the speech, or when hopefully creative inspiration takes over in our writing, we are engrossed with a degree of forgetfulness of self. In this experience, wishing and willing become one. One characteristic of the creative experience is that it makes for a temporary union by transcending the conflict. The temptation is for the second ream to take over the first; we lose our spontaneity, our free flow of activity, and will become effortful, controlled and so forth, Victorian will power. Our error, then, is that will tries to take over the work of imagination. This is very close to a wish. Will is the capacity to organize oneself so that movement in a certain direction or toward a certain goal may take place. Wish is the imaginative playing with the possibility of some act or state occurring. #RandolphHarris 11 of 15
Will and wish may be seen as operating in polarity. Will requires self-consciousness; wish does not. Will implies some possibility of either/or choice; wish does not. Wish gives the warmth, the content, the imagination, the innocence’s play, the freshness, and the richness of the will. Will gives the self-direction, the maturity, to wish. Will protect wish, permits it to continue without wish, will loses its life-blood, its viability, and tends to expire in self-contradiction. If you have only will and no wish, you have the dried-up, Victorian, neopuritan mortal. If you have only wish and no will, you have the driven, unfree, infantile person who, as an adult-remaining-an-infant, may become the robot mortal. Awareness of one’s feelings lays the groundwork for knowing what one want. This point may look very simple at first glance—who does not know what one wants? However, the amazing thing is how few people actually do. If one looks honestly into oneself, does one not find that most of what one thinks one wants is just routines like fresh fish on Friday; or what one wants is what one thinks one should want—like being a success in his or her work; or wants to want—like loving one’s neighbor? One can often see clearly the expression of direct and honest wants in children before they have been taught to falsify their desires. The child exclaims, “I like ice cream, I want a cone,” and there is no confusion about who wants what. #RandolphHarris 12 of 15
Such directness of desire often comes like a breath of fresh air in a murky land. It may not be best that one has the cone at the time, and it is obviously the parents’ responsibility to say Yes or No if the child is not mature enough to decide. However, let the parents not teach the child to falsify one’s emotions by trying to persuade him or her that he or she does not want the cone! To be aware of one’s feelings and desires does not at all imply expressing them indiscriminately wherever one happens to be. Judgment and decision are part of any mature consciousness of self. However, how is one going to have a basis for judging wat one will or will not do unless one first knows what one wants? For an adolescent to be aware that one wants to drive a brand-new BMW 3 Series, does not mean that one acts on this impulse. However, suppose he never lets his impulses reach the threshold of awareness because they are not socially acceptable? How is he then to know years later, when he buys a care, whether he wants to drive it or not, or whether because thus is then the acceptable and expected act, the routine thing to do? People who voice with alarm the caution that unless desires and emotions are suppressed they will pop out every which way, and everyone, will experience neurotic emotions. As a matter of fact, we know that it is precisely the emotions and desires which have been repressed which later return to drive the person compulsively. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15
The Victorian gyroscope kind of person had to control his or her emotions rigidly, for, by virtue of having locked them up in jail, one had turned them into lawbreakers. However, the more integrated a person is, the loses compulsive become one’s emotions. In the mature person feelings and wants occur in a configuration. In seeing a dinner as part of a drama on the stage, to give a simple example, one is not consumed with desires for food; one came to see a drama and not to eat. Or wen listening to a concert singer, one is not consumed with pleasures of the flesh even though she may be very attractive; the configuration is set by the fact that one chose in coming to hear music. Of course, as we have indicted, none of us escape conflicts from time to time. However, these are different from being compulsively driven by emotions. Every direct and immediate experience of feeling and wanting is spontaneous and unique. That is to say, the wanting and feeling are uniquely part of that particular situation at the particular time and place. Spontaneity means to be able to respond directly to the total picture—or, as it is technically called, to respond to the figure-ground configuration. Spontaneity is the active “I” becoming part of the figure ground. In a good portrait painting the background is always an integral part of the portrait; so an act of a mature human being is an integral part of the self in relation to the World around it. #RandolphHarris 14 of 15
Spontaneity, thus, is very different from effervescence or egocentricity, or letting out one’s feelings regardless of the environment. Spontaneity, rather is the acting “I” responding to a particular environment at a given moment. The originality and uniqueness which is always part of spontaneous feeling can be understood in this light. For just as there never was exactly that situation before and never will be again, so the feeling one has at that time is new and never to be exactly repeated. It is only neurotic behavior which is rigidly repetitive. God’s great plan of happiness provide a perfect balance between eternal justice and the mercy we can obtain through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. It also enables us to be transformed into new creatures in Christ. A loving God reaches out to each of us. We know that through his love and because of his Atonement of his only begotten Son, all humankind may be saved, by obedience to the laws and ordinances. Eternal relationships are also fundamental to our theology. The family is ordained of God. Under the great plan of our loving Creator, the mission is to achieve the supernal blessing of exaltation in the celestial kingdom. Finally, God’s love is so great that, except for the few who become people of perdition, God has provided a destiny of glory for all his children, including those who have passed away. Our loving Heavenly Father wants us to have joy. “Do not tell secrets to those whose faith and silence you have not already tested,” reports Kate Atkinson. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15
As Stars that Drop Anonymous from an Abundant Sky that Sense was Breaking through
I cannot believe this girl is still breathing, it is some kind of miracle. Courage is an ethical reality, but it is based in the whole breadth of human existence and ultimately in the structure of being itself. Therefore, to be understood ethically, it must be considered ontologically. Virtue is knowledge, and ignorance about what courage is makes any action in accordance with the true nature of courage impossible. The lack of courage is a basic problem of human existence. The understanding of courage presupposed an understanding of humanity and of the World, its structures and values. Only one who knows this knows what to affirm and what to negate. Courage can show us what being is, and being can show us what courage is. “Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfected in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God,” reports Moroni 10.32. Courage as the universal and essential self-affirmation of one’s being is an ontological concept. The courage to be is the ethical act in which a person affirms one own being in spite of those elements of one’s existence which conflict with one’s essential self-affirmation. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14
Courage is relayed to the element of the soul and it possess the intellectual and sensual elements on human beings. It is the unreflective striving toward what is noble. As such it has a central position in the structure of the soul, it bridges the cleavage between reason and desire. “And again, if ye by the grace of God are perfect in Christ, and deny not his power, then are ye sanctified in Christ by the grace of God, through the shedding of the blood of Christ, which is in the covenant of the Father unto the remission of our sins, that we become holy, without spot,” reports Moroni 10.33. This is how we represent what is noble and graceful because it is impossible for us to have living and vital intercessions unless we are perfectly and completely sure of God. Out of our assurance arise wisdom, and then this wisdom is fortified by our courage. “Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit,” reports Ephesians 6.18. A beautiful noble deed is a deed to be praised. Courage does what is to be praised and rejects what is to be despised. One praised that in which a being fulfills its potentialities or actualizes its perfections. Courage is the affirmation of one’s essential nature, one’s inner aim or entelechy, but it is an affirmation which has in itself the character of in spite of. #RandolphHarris 2 of 14
Courage includes the possible and, in some cases, the unavoidable sacrifice of elements which also belong to one’s being but which, if not sacrificed, would prevent us from reaching our actual fulfillment. And the greatest destroyer of that confident relationship to God is our own personal sympathy and preconceived bias. Thus, this sacrifice may include pleasure and happiness and for some people there very existence. In any case it is praiseworthy, because in the act of courage the most essential part of our being prevails against the less essential. It is the beauty and goodness of courage that the good and the beautiful are actualized in it. “Behold, I have come unto the World to bring redemption unto the World, to save the World from sin,” reports 3 Nephi 9.21. Therefore it is noble. Perfection is realized in degrees, natural, personal, and social; and courage as the affirmation of one’s essential being is more conspicuous in some of these degrees than in others. Since the greatest test of courage is the readiness to make the greatest sacrifice, the sacrifice of one’s life, and since the soldier is required by his or her profession to always be ready for this sacrifice, the soldier’s courage is and somehow remains the outstanding example of courage. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14
Courage is a universal knowledge of what is good and evil, wisdom and courage converge and it became again characteristic of nobility. The knight is one who represents courage as a soldier and as a nobleperson. They possess the high, noble and courageous spirit. In Germany, even in the past, soldiers were looked at as being firm, weighty, important and powerful. They were seen as members of the upper strata of feudal society. Never sympathize with someone who find it difficult to get to God; God is not to blame. It is not for us to figure out the reason for the difficulty; but only to present the truth of God so that the Spirit of God will reveal what is wrong. When the truth is preached, the Spirit of God bring each person face-to-face with God himself. Courage is the strength of mind, capable of conquering whatever threatens the attainment of the highest good. It is untied with wisdom, the virtue which represents the unity of the four cardinal virtues (the other two being justice and temperance). “For it is time for judgment to begin with the family of God; and if it beings with us, what will the outcome be for those who do not obey the gospel of God? And, if it is hard for the righteous to be saved, what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?” reports 1 Peter 9.17-18. Courage, untied with wisdom, includes temperance in relation to oneself as well as justice in relation to others. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14
The question then is whether courage or wisdom is the more comprehensive virtue. The answer is dependent on the outcome of the famous discussion about the priority of intellect or will in the essence of being, and consequently, in the human personality. Under the dominance of wisdom courage is essential the strength of mind which makes obedience to the dictates of reason (or revelation) possible, while venturing courage participates in the creation of wisdom. “For it is God’s will that by doing good one should silence the ignorant talk of foolish people. Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as servants of God. Show proper respect to everyone: Love the fellowship of believers, fear God, honor the king,” reports 1 Peter 2.16-17. Perfect courage is a gift of the Divine Spirit. And if we ourselves are free with the liberty of Christ, others will be brought into that same liberty—the liberty that comes from realizing the absolute control and authority of Jesus Christ. Through the Spiritual natural strength of mind is elevated to its supernatural perfection. This however means that it is untied with the specifically Christian virtues, faith, hope, and love. Thus a development is visible in which the ontological side of courage is take into faith (including hope), while the ethical side of courage is taken into love or the principles of ethics. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14
The reception of courage into faith, especially insofar as it implies hope, as courage listens to reason and carries out the intention of the mind. It is the strength of the soul to win victory in ultimate danger, like those martyrs of the Old Testament who are enumerated in Hebrews 11. Courage gives consolation, patience, and experience and becomes indistinguishable from faith and hope. In the light of this development we can see that every attempt to define courage is confronted with these alternatives: either to use courage as the name for one virtue among others, blending the larger meaning of the word into faith and hope; or to preserve the larger meaning and interpret faith through an analysis of courage. “Behold, I am coming soon! Blessed is one who keeps the words of prophecy in this book,” reports Revelation 22.7. Creativity is the ability or power to produce originality of thought and expression. In terms of human behavior, creative refers to being innovative, coming up with new or novel ideas, actions, or constructions. A person is creative when one can take the already existing elements, ideas, thoughts, experiences one finds in or around one and put them together in new and different ways. Inventors and artist are usually mentioned as good examples of creative people. However, they are far from being the only ones. #RandolphHarris 6 of 14
A person is creative when one discovers a new way of getting to work that may save one time or money or energy, or one that merely enables one to experience different things along the route. A mother may be extremely creative in finding new ways to get her housework done or in enlisting the help of her children. A student who tries out several student techniques and finds one that works well for him or her—even though one may not have invented it—is creative. In fact, it would be a rare person who has never engaged in some creative act and produced something new and valuable for at least one other individual. What then is creativity? Is it a quality of a circumstance? It is something you are born with or which you can develop? It is a gift or a curse? The answers are still in process, but the results of some of the studies can be used as guide lines. One study, for instance, shows us that creativity is much more a matter of potentials being unfolded or developed than being an inborn trait of gift. This study found that certain person displayed higher than ordinary amounts of originality, adaptiveness, and realization, the ability to bring an original insight to full elaboration and development. Some of the noblest figures in later antiquity and their followers in modern times have answered the problem of existence and conquered the anxieties of fate and death by being creative. #RandolphHarris 7 of 14
A person who is defined by oneself and by others using rating scales as being creative shows several interesting traits. One is: an effective leader, takes an ascendant role in one’s relations with others. Is persuasive; tends to win other people over to one’s point of view. It turned to for advice and reassurance. Id efficient, capable, able to mobilize resources easily and effectively. A creative person is also active and vigorous. Is an expressive, ebullient person. Seeks and enjoys aesthetic and sensuous impressions. Is natural; free from pretense, unaffected. Is self-reliant, independent in judgment; able to think for oneself. This is but one of the many lists of traits that have a high beneficial correlation with creative productivity. If all people can develop creativity, and this seems to be the case, how do we foster it? What are the environmental conditions that nurture it? How it is stifled? Creative people generally were given many opportunities for self-fulfillment as children. They were encouraged to explore, not only their physical surroundings, but their own ideas and feelings. They were given guidance and instruction when it was requested, but the initiative was seldom taken away from them except when they were in danger. #RandolphHarris 8 of 14
Perseverance means more than endurance, more than simply holding on until the end. Entrust yourself to God’s hands. For instance, one parent of an exceptionally creative and self-reliant child declares that when the boy was learning to walk, they encouraged him, helped him t stand up, set up all the conditions necessary for a successful effort, and let him go. When he started to totter or fall, neither parent rushed in to catch him. They knew he would fall on a soft carpet, that there were no hard object for him to hit, that he would learn from falling. In the process, he also learned that he was loved and paid attention to, that his right to try was freely given, and his right to fail also. H knew that he was loved for himself, not for succeeding or in spite of failing. The same kinds of learning occurred in most tasks that he undertook. The only people our Lord will use in his building enterprises are those who love him personally, passionately, and with great devotion—those who have a love for him that goes beyond any of the closet relationships on Earth. When God inspects us with his searching and refining fire, will he detect that we have built enterprises of our own on the foundation of Jesus? #RandolphHarris 9 of 14
Creativity, then, seems to have a lot to do with autonomy and faith and self-reliance. Many studies confirm this. It also as much to do with a certain degree of nonconformity. Self-actualizing nonconformity is not adolescent rebellion or stubborn resistance to what is asked of a person. It is more a matter of willingness to try a different approach, deviate from the usual, easy, or traditional way of doing things. It calls for living experimentally, a willingness to run the risk of failure, of being rejected, of alienating others, and of losing one’s direction. However, the person may be willing to run these risks—for what in life is not risky?—because intrinsically one has self-confidence, one has known much love and acceptance, one values freedom and expression, and one respect oneself and therefore has courage to be. What of those people who do not have the Emotional Bank Account upon which to write checks for experimental living? Some can use what they do not have and hope that it will get them by. Other can profit from education and example: patterning behavior on that of others and by identification and experiencing small success adding to the bank balance. Some will require professional help. Sensitivity training is one avenue. Encounter groups in school, church, business, or privately can be a source of great help. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14
Psychotherapy, from simple counseling by a clergyperson or school counselor to intensive ongoing psychoanalysis, may be the most effective approach. Whatever the method, the journey is long and hard. It takes a lot of courage. After all, it took many years to damage or kill that creative spirit, that curiosity manifested by all healthy youngsters. However, to revitalize it is well worth the effort spent. More and more people are discovering that it is not an entirely lonely quest, that their lives were empty and meaningless before the attempt. That knowledge gives them the courage and incentive to continue trying. This sounds very much like what was said earlier about the difficulty of the search for significance. It is. Significance as a human being includes all of these things. As different as they all are, creativity, emotional richness, self-realization, courage, and meaningful experimental living are all aspects of living fully that are present in each of us in the potential sense. They are readily undercovered and developed in a few people, but in the large group they have been discouraged, neglected, deprecated, put down, crippled, or badly damaged. Parents often unwittingly stifle the creative impulse by the way they communicate, by the way they try to teach and instill values and skills. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14
Never allowing a child to experiment or do it oneself is one of the ways that parents stifle creativity and courage in children. Often unconsciously, parents perceive danger where danger is only remotely probable, or they attach important to actions that from a child’s viewpoint or of no consequence. Similarly, behavior that is socially unacceptable for an adult is discouraged in the young, even though that behavior (for example, playing with power tools) is totally outside the social realm in early childhood. The advocated, even necessary, parental attitudes are nearly impossible to achieve, for they involve, as sensitive educators and psychologists will maintain, perceiving as a child perceives. About the best we can do is to strike a balance. Nobody is going to advocate putting a child into a dangerous situation unnecessarily. However, sometimes a stubborn, pertinacious child can be taught the meaning of hot by guiding (and controlling) his or her hand toward a hot oven or iron (NOT recommend as it could be dangerous). A slight but memorable burn is often excellent protection against more dangerously free actions. Somehow, to strike the balance, parents must be watchful, objective, and permissive—but all to a point. Parenthood is probably the most difficult function and individual ever faces. #RandolphHarris 12 of 14
Creativity is fostered by encouraging the child to try oneself out in a variety of tasks. Success in the task may add to the child’s self-esteem and also provide the child with a monument of one’s own selfhood. However, failure need not be a mark of worthlessness; it can be a chance to discover where self-resources were lacking or in error. The experienced artist does not worry about messing up one’s canvas, since one knows both the one can correct the mess and that is shows one something about one’s technique. Schooling provides the actualizing student with opportunities to try oneself out in a number of different situations. One can interact creatively with the instructor, who hopefully responds to this kind of interchange, by the kinds of questions and answers one makes, by the kinds of projects one undertakes, by the kinds of papers one turns in, and by the sort of roles one plays in class. One can interact creatively with the subject matter by the way one studies, by the kinds of sources utilizes, and by the openness with which one views the subject area. One can interact creatively with one’s peers, one’s classmates and others one lives and works with on the campus. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14
The commercial work scene is changing slowly to permit more people to experience a creative part in their jobs. Suggestion boxes did not begin the process, but they are a small part of the program. Conferences between employees, middle management, and employers are increasing, enabling all participants in the life of the corporation to give and take openly. Employers are also finding new vitality and creativity arising from employee participation in encounter and sensitivity group experiences. Creativity is a valuable part of the life of not only the individual but the entire society. Creative people, those who act courageously to explore new ideas and ways of doing things, build a society that can meet changing conditions and become what it is capable of becoming. Metaphysical truth is found in the conformity between our ideas and those in the mind of God; logical truth, in the conformity between our ideas and the things of which they are ideas. We cannot apprehend the former kind of truth; but since the latter involves knowing the unknowable, logical truth is reduced to consistency. The satisfaction we feel at certain consequences, and the pain we suffer at others, are ordained by God and are signs that we are already under his government. Thus, a consideration of his nature alone shows that we must acknowledge the place of God in our lives. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14
Randolph Harris II International Institute 